ROH wrestler Jay Lethal looks back on his TNA promo with Ric Flair, seeing wrestling through a fan's perspective, his best of three falls ROH match with Tommaso CiampaAug 22, 2012 - 12:01 PM

Kayfabe Wrestling Radio with Jay Lethal
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His 2-out-of 3 Fall match with Tommaso Ciampa and how the Ciampa’s injury changed the match: "I tell you, it was actually before the first fall. Before the bell had even rung, because we attempted to do, in professional wrestling, what is called a jump start where the match actually starts before the bell even rings but you only get into the match like 10 seconds before the ref rings the bell. So, before the bell even rang, right away I’m like "he’s hurt"and he attempted to stand up a few times and couldn’t even do it; he’s screaming cuss words. Right away I’m like, ‘Ok, I’ll get my first fall here and give him some time to rest’ as we get a 30-second break between each fall. So, I thought, ‘I guess we can just get out of here because this isn’t entertainment’; much like if Denzel (Washington) got hurt on set, I’m sure they’d call cut, that’s probably why they don’t do movies live with a live audience. But luckily Tommaso, he’s a trooper, man, so he wanted to continue the whole time too; and we went a good distance, a whole 20-minutes, and he wanted to do the 2-out-of-3 falls so credit to him. I don’t know if I would have done it if in his shoes; he was hurting pretty bad."

Being able to see wresting through a fan’s perspective: "As a fan, and I think I have a little edge over some people, as opposed to when other wrestlers say ‘look at it from a fan’s point of view’;the longer you are a wrestler, the harder it is to look at it from a fan point of view. We think it’s easy but some people they have delusions of grandeur; they don’t quite understand that once when you become a wrestler, it automatically means you over think certain things and you never, ever, EVER think like a fan anymore. No matter who says it, how many times they say it, how much they believe it, it’s just impossible; you know too much and know too much back story and you over think things and not even on purpose. It just seems to happen. Being one of the youngest guys, I feel that I’m still a victim of not being able to look at it fully from a fan point of view, even thought I feel that I do, sometimes. As one of the youngest guys, I feel I would have a little edge over the older guys."

If he’d step up to face Steen, if asked, and his thoughts on S.C.U.M.-"To answer that, first of all, 100 percent; it’s not a question of would I, it’s a question of when will Jim Cornette give me the opportunity to step in the ring with Kevin Steen. Not only do I feel it would be an honor to step into the ring with the World Champion, like I did with Davey Richards when he was the world champion, but I’d like to get a chance to test myself against the company’s number one guy. And they are creative, they’ve got the evil, which is live spelled backwards and I just think it would just be really cool."

On his interaction with Ric Flair: "I get that question all the time, ‘What was it like doing that promo back and forth with Ric Flair’ (the ‘That’s my line’ That’s MY Line’ promo); that whole thing was actually on the fly, that was one of the scariest days of my life. The reason it was so scary was because, and I wrote this in my blog, this was the first time that TNA, ever EVER gave me a chance to have any kind of live promo… not only was it a live promo, a live microphone, but it was in the ring. Nine times out of ten, when a wrestler goes to the ring with a microphone, he already knows what he is going to say; he has bullet points of what he’s going to say, or he has some kind of major outline. Very rarely nowadays do wrestlers go to the ring, completely not knowing what they are going to say or without a topic because its television and everything has to be written out, everything has to be planned, and the owners have to know what is going to be put on their television. Ric Flair is one of those guys that you cannot write something for and he will not let you write anything for him, so therefore, nothing could be written for me ahead. Everything that I had to go off of, as far as an outline, was going to be said by Ric Flair; I just had to feed off of him and do whatever he said; just fed off of whatever he said. If he had said something about alphabet soup, I would have had to jump all over alphabet soup, which was scary because, like I said, this was the first time they ever gave me a live microphone and now they are pushing me out there to go toe-to-toe with one of the best microphone artists this sport has ever seen."

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